Students gathered in the Hoynak Room for a Great Gatsby themed murder mystery night filled with laughter, thrill, and theatrics Nov. 9. 

Students played in teams of up to five people, each team playing a character who had attended Jay Gatsby’s gala when character Sid Forman was unexpectedly murdered. The objective of the game was to figure out who killed Forman and how. Teams also competed to win categories in best actor and best dressed.

“SAB did very well with this event,” sophomore MaryEllen Petersen said. “I think it was one of the highlight events of the semester for me. It was really well done.”

SAB team member Rachel Hintze said in the days leading up to the event, teams received an email with the theme, the set up, and the character they would be playing. 

Hintze said when teams began to trickle into the Searle Center, they were dressed for their parts. Some women wore flapper dresses, some men wore tuxedos, and some used accents. 

Junior Bella Dix said her team playing Tom Buchanan, a polo player, had three people dressed up as Buchanan and two dressed up as his horse.

“We decided to be a little avant garde with it,” her team member junior Rachel Houts said. “We then took that bit and we ran with it.”

Hintze said when teams arrived they signed in outside the Hoynak Room and were given two folders: one for before the murder and one for after.

All the teams had passed through the golden tassels hanging from the entryway at 7 p.m., and were engaging in conversation with each other at Jay Gatsby’s gala.

“Some groups would split up and go talk to different characters,” Hintze said. “But most people would go as a group up to another group of four or five students and would have conversations where there would really be 10 people, but they were playing two characters.”

When Forman was killed, Hintze said the lights dimmed down and the sound of gunshots echoed through the room. When the lights turned back on, Forman was laying on the ground dead. 

Hintze said teams then had time to talk to one another and try to find who the murderer was. 

“There was a group who was apparently just making things up to say and lying,” Petersen said. “It was so funny because I didn’t learn about that until I had Great Books with them the next day and they said they made up a bunch of stuff to people.”

Forman came back to the game as detective Dickie to lay out all the murder evidence to the teams Hintze said; that signaled the end of the conversations.

“At the end they have the detective stand up and be like ‘here is all the evidence,’” Petersen said. “Then everyone is given an envelope with different pictures and then they tell us we have 10 minutes to write our answer down.”

Petersen said when the 10 minutes were up, SAB collected all the answer sheets and gave a run down of the whole plot. It was revealed to her and the rest of the students that Greta Gatsby had picked the lock to Jay Gatsby’s gun box and shot Forman. 

Hintze said there was a three way tie between teams Daisy Gatsby, Billie Love, and Eddie Brewer. The team playing Billie Love won best dressed and the team playing Jay Gatsby won best actor. 

“They put it on really well,” Dix said. “I think we would all totally do it again.”